Newsletter

WAR: It's A Guy Thing

That could easily have been the headline on the New York Times’ front page this month.

I wonder how many women watch the same old war movies I watch and think… “ I got to get me some of that ! ”

I have to admit, for a large portion of my life, the Army was a good thing, and things military were something to be admired.

Slowly over time, thanks to Hollywood and the Ken Burns “Civil War” series, and the criminally irresponsibility of the Operation Iraqi Freedom, my taste for war, and military adventure, has greatly diminished.

The truth of the matter is that the BEST thing you can say about war is that it does thin the herd.

At its very core, war is a gruesome perversion of the fact of human life on “ our ” planet.

The evolution of warfare is an interesting spot from which to look at war making, as imagined by Hollywood, and Cine’ Moi.

The film featured scenes of combat that decided who would rule England.

The most basic of wars, in which the entire conflict was fought man to man. Broad swords, spiked iron balls swung at the end of a chain. Even pointed wooden staves with which they battered, and skewered, each other.

Thousands of helmeted conscripts toe to toe, in an open field, and all screaming at the top of their lungs, as they flailed away at each other. Combat that no Knight Of The Round Table would be caught dead at…no pun intended.

In Burns’ “ Civil War ” it was a war of attrition. Usinga “ Stand Your Ground ” format,the armies of The Blue and The Gray simply kneeled in lines and blasted away at each other, inflicting deadly wounds that killed by means of infection, more than by sharp shooting.

The toll on the field, AND in the hospitals was staggering.

The industrial revolution radically changed the world economy, and as a by-product changed forever the face of war.Planes, tanks, and trains took some of the heat off the boys in the trenches.

Finally, we arrive in the present, where unmanned flying drones kill with presumed pin-point accuracy, making less vital the need to shout, “ Over the top boys…follow me !!! ”

Well, all things considered, this seems like an ideal time to turn some of the combat over to the softer sex. Officially, that is.

Women have been in frontlines, in various guises,already. Ask any Vietnam combat veteran.

As we edge toward a war model that relies on electronic gadgetry more than boots on the ground….hey, anybody can play, and they will.

Congratulations to all the G.I. Janes out there. The field of combat has finally been declared a level one, as far as gender is concerned.

Maybe the next evolutionary step in making war will be to say, “Aw, the hell with it !We’ve had our bellyful of war, military budgets, and the Pentagon as a concept.